You see, I believe that every elite military organization known to man has had a funny haircut. The Normans who conquered England wore one that looked as though they put on a beret, cocked it a bit, and then shaved off everything that wasn't covered. The Cossacks shaved their heads except for a pony tail hanging on the left side. The Mongols shaved a big square on the top of their heads, leaving a curl in the middle of their foreheads, in front of their ears, and a thick fringe around the back.
I don't understand the psychology of this brand of nonsense, but obviously, we had to have a funny haircut too. For a while there, I was toying with going to a Mohawk, but then I decided that the modem military crew cut was as weird as any of them, and took a lot less maintenance to keep up.
We also spent a lot of time on unarmed combat, for a warrior must stay a warrior even if he's unarmed and naked.
But after two weeks, I had to leave and go the rounds of the other factories. There were always technical problems where a few words from me could save hundreds of man-hours, and managerial problems that only the boss could resolve.
I put Sir Vladimir in charge when I was gone, and I gave him a daily schedule of what was to be done. He followed it as best he could. For my own part, I tried to stay with the physical training program even when I was on the road, but it was hard to do.
I especially didn't want to stint the boys at Eagle Nest. Those kids were so earnest that I felt a moral commitment to give them all the help I could. It didn't faze them in the least that one of their members had already died in the air. They fully expected to take further casualties and, in typically Polish fashion, were willing to pay the price. It wasn't the ignorant feeling of 'it can't happen to me.' They knew that it could happen to them! They just felt that the prize was worth the price, and they went on. This from twelve- and thirteen-year old boys! If only NASA had such heroes!
What could I do but love them and help them in every way that I could? For now, I got them into sailplanes, and designed a launching device that would be built on top of the big conical hill near there. There was plenty of coal tar stockpiled at Coaltown, so we scheduled an asphalt runway on the plain below the hill. In time, other runways were added so that they could land no matter which way the wind was blowing, and eventually an entire half square mile was paved over. This not only permitted landing in any wind, but on sunny days it caused a lovely up-draft that went up for miles!
Wing struts proved to be a problem. The most efficient sailplane wings are very long and thin, and we had to support them without the benefit of aircraft aluminum. What we came up with was a sort of synthetic bamboo. I had a huge lathe built that could turn an eight-yard-long spruce log. We bored a conical hole down the middle of it, inserted a long iron cone in the hole and turned the outside of the log so that the thickness of the wall was half that of your little finger. Then the iron cone was removed and wooden discs were glued inside every half yard. This assembly had an astounding strength-to-weight ratio. Two of them fastened together end to end at the fuselage ran down the center of the wings. It held.
Count Lambert was often at Eagle Nest when I was there. He complained that they were making great progress with the aircraft themselves, but that I had once described to him an engine that could power an aircraft, and I was doing nothing about developing one.
The problem was that there were a lot of things higher on my priority list than a glorified lawnmower engine. There was the tooling to mass produce armor, a rapid-fire breach-loading cannon to develop, and we needed to be able to mass produce shells, bullets, gunpowder, sword blades, boots, and all sorts of things. I didn't even have a dependable source of lead and zinc yet, let alone sulfur!
But Count Lambert and the boys teamed up on me and extracted a promise. I would start working on an engine once they could build a two-man glider that could stay up for an hour. Knowing the problems involved, I didn't think that my promise would seriously upset my schedules.
There were two major sour points in early 1236, and they both hit me within the same week. I was being sued, twice. One lawsuit was by Count Lambert's brother Herman. He was no longer pleased with the brass works that I'd sold him. Rather than making him money, it was costing him money, due, I was sure, to his poor management. He felt that it was all my fault, and he was a count whereas I was a mere knight, which proved it to his satisfaction — He wanted his money back.
The other one was from Baron Stefan. He had decided that I was still on the land that Lambert had wrongly given me, land which had been in his family for more than three hundred years, he said. He wanted the land back and for me to pay damages for the trees I'd cut down and the fences I'd put up.
They gave me a few months of needless worry until the duke was passing through one snowy day and threw both cases out of court. Or rather, he dismissed both suits because he was the court.
Count Herman's suit was dismissed because I had delivered the property agreed upon and had never promised that it would be profitable. He gave the count a fatherly lecture about trusting to the workingman rather than to the man's tools and nobody mentioned the fact that the duke himself owned the factory that had run the count's factory out of business.
The duke became angry when he found that Baron Stefan had failed to come at Count Lambert's summons to beat the bounds between our properties. He said that if the baron lost land because of that, he deserved it, and a horse whipping besides for disobeying his liege lord.
It helps to have friends in high places.
Also that winter, Anna and I scouted out the Malapolska Hills, north of Cracow, where I knew there were deposits of zinc, lead, iron, and coal. She said that winter was the best time for smelling out this sort of thing, since there were fewer other smells around '
We found deposits of zinc and lead fairly close together, or at least there were two different ores and Anna said that they both stank like sulfur and I knew that both ores here were sulfides. Lead and iron had been smelted here for thousands of years, and some archeologists believe that it was here that iron was first made.
But zinc was unknown as a separate metal. It was used as an alloying element with copper to make brass, but the ores were mixed before smelting to make brass directly, or zinc ore was mixed with copper before casting and copper was actually used to reduce the zinc!
Late that summer, I found out why.
The fact is I wouldn't have gotten zinc at all if I hadn't added some pollution-control equipment to the blast furnace there. There wasn't even a real need to control pollution, since our facilities were tiny by modem standards and didn't seriously effect the environment. But the problem would grow unless we started off doing things right, so I was adding dust collectors where possible.
When we tried to smelt the zinc ore, after roasting it to convert the sulfide to the oxide, all we got was slag. No metal at all came out. It was only when we cleaned out the dust collector that we found drops of zinc there.
The zinc had left the furnace as a gas! Small wonder the ancients never found it. They weren't worried about pollution at all!
By the next winter, we were producing zinc in quantity, but I get ahead of myself.
Work started on the training base as soon as the ground thawed. I'd chosen the land because of the varied terrain, with both mountains and plains on it, and because it was the least populated area of my lands. I only had to pay seven yeomen to move their families off it.
Eventually, the main barracks would be a square castle a mile to the side and six stories tall, but it was modest enough to start out. It had bunk-bed space for sixteen dozen men and a dining hall that doubled as a church, both made of concrete blocks. There was a big concrete parade around and a twelvemile long obstacle course that was rougher than anything that I'd ever heard of.
On schedule, over a gross of peasants arrived from Count Lambert, or rather one from each of his knights. I had specifically asked for rough, disobedient characters. Peasants who were "too smart for their own good."
> They certainly looked the part. If ever there were a bunch of men who looked like they should be hung on general principles, this was the gang. With one exception.
Piotr Kulczynski was with them.
Chapter Nineteen
FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI
I had spent much of the winter in preparation to attend Sir Conrad's warrior school. I had trained one of my subordinates, Jozef Kulisiewicz, to take over my position for a year, taking him twice on my rounds of Sir Conrad's factories and inns, and saw to it that his replacement was well trained.
I had artfully observed all the exercises that Sir Conrad and his knights were doing, and diligently practiced them myself. And I had worked on Count Lambert very carefully, and eventually got him to appoint me to the school. This was not easy, for while my father was one of the count's peasants, I was not, being sworn to Sir Conrad. But I persisted with the count, and came up with many reasons why I should go. At last, I irritated him sufficiently.
"Dog's blood! If you were sworn to me, I'd have you whipped! Piotr, you are too damn smart for your own good!"
"Yes, my lord. But isn't that precisely what Sir Conrad asked for? Men who were too smart?"
"By God it was, and I'm going to send you there just to get you out of my mustache! I know what Sir Conrad has planned at that school, and I think you'll be dead in three days if you go!"
"Thank you, my lord."
"You can thank me after he kills you! Now get out of here and get out of town, too!"
My plan accomplished, I left quickly. For I thought it was absolutely necessary that I attend the warrior school. My position as chief accountant gave me an excellent income, pleasant working conditions, and considerable prestige, but it did not give me what I really wanted. It did not give me Krystyana.
She was intent on marrying a true belted knight, or not marrying at all. Although nothing had been said of it, I was sure that those who survived the warrior school would soon be knighted. What other purpose could the school have?
So thus it was that I was standing in line with a gross of the grossest peasants I'd ever seen. It seemed that they had been picked for ugliness rather than for any other reason. They were all huge and hairy and smelled bad. I began to think that I had made a big mistake, a serious error in my career development plan.
"Piotr, what the hell are you doing here?" Sir Conrad shouted.
"Count Lambert sent me here, my lord. He said that I was rude and insubordinate and that if I were sworn to him, he'd have me whipped."
"Count Lambert could have you hung, sworn to him or not! Who is taking over your job?"
"Jozef Kulisiewicz, my lord. He's quite competent."
"I'll bet he is! After this stunt, he just might keep your job! You conniving little runt! You planned this, didn't you? Well, you planned wrong! You wanted to come here? Okay! You'll stay here! You're not my squire any more, Piotr. You're just another grunt in this line!"
I was so shocked that I barely heard the things that he said to the others in the line, though he was loud enough to make a snake listen. My position gone? And I was no longer a squire? What had I done to myself?. Surely no one would knight this bunch of ruffians! I was ruined!
They gave me little time to bemoan my fate. We were marched off to the showers, for Sir Conrad said that we stank too badly for him to stand before us.
They had us strip naked and throw our clothes into a pile, to be burned, they said. Burning was probably the right thing to do with the rags that the others were wearing, but I had been spending much of my pay on nice clothing! My red hose and purple tunic were thrown into the pile of rags, along with my blue hat, my green cloak, and my beautiful Cracow shoes with the longest pointed toes in Silesia! I could only thank God that I hadn't worn my sword and armor, reasoning that none of the others would have such finery.
We were each given a small bag with our name on it for our valuables. We were told that these would be returned to us if we survived the year out, or sent to our families in the more likely event that we did not.
Four old women were waiting for us with sheep clippers, another of Sir Conrad's inventions.
We were each clipped of all hair, from head to foot and all in between, with the old women laughing at the small sizes of our privy members or occasionally pretending to be astounded at the size of others.
It was a vastly humiliating experience, and followed by the knights shouting at us to wash our bald heads and denuded bodies with the foulest smelling soap I've ever encountered.
We were each inspected for fleas before they let us out to air dry in the cold spring wind.
We were issued clothing from stacks of ready-made garments. There were even some that fit me tolerably well, but it was all of the baggy peasant cut that doesn't have to be well-fitted. The boots were sturdy, and of the cut of Sir Conrad's hiking boots, with blunt toes and no style at all.
The other grunts-for that is what they called us-were surprised at the quality of the clothing, but for myself, I thought it ugly. The cloth was sturdy linen, undyed and without any embroidery. The others liked the food as well, for it was like that normally served at Sir Conrad's installations, but it was no new thing for me.
The barracks were of blocks of artificial stone and we must needs sleep in bunks three decks tall, with four dozen men to the room, but all was remarkably clean and orderly.
We soon found out how it was kept that clean, for much of our time was spent in cleaning and polishing. That is to say, much of our time that was not spent doing other things, for they kept us inordinately busy. We were up every day before dawn, to wash in cold water and stand in neat lines before breakfast, to say mass and recite our oath at sunrise, always followed by a run that started at three miles but was eventually extended to twelve. Nor was this a simple run on flat land. It went up and down hills, over obstacles made of huge logs, over chasms hand over hand on ropes, and up and down cliffs. Many of the grunts were injured and no few killed in the process, for great fatigue and dangerous heights are a deadly combination. Whenever someone was hurt, we always got an impromptu first aid lesson, and all things stopped while we watched the victim being sewn back together again. We were constantly marching or running or jumping up and down and doing other exercises. After a week, we were issued weapons, first a pike, then a sword and dagger, and lastly a halberd. Fully a quarter of our day was spent working with these weapons, or the quarterstaff, or learning to fight without any weapons at all.
Another quarter of our day was spent in the classrooms, for it was decreed that all must learn to do arithmetic, and to be able to read and write. As I had already mastered these subjects, I was put to tutoring some of the others, though most had difficulty learning when they were so tired. In fact, more men were dismissed for mental reasons than for physical ones.
Some of the grunts actually went crazy under the strain of it. One man locked himself in a supply closet and when we finally got him out, he was babbling incoherently. He was naked and smeared with his own shit.
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ
Getting the army going was the hardest thing I've ever done.
It wasn't the arms or armor although that was a lot of work. The Bessemer converter to make cast iron into steel took many thousands of man-hours, as did the rolling mill that made sheetmetal and the stamping line that pressed out helmets, breast plates, shoulder cops, and the other twenty-seven pieces it took to cover a man. And every piece had to be made in at least four different sizes, so the total number of dies required was huge.
We were making steel using the wootz process, so making good pike heads, halberds, swords, and daggers was straightforward, but still a lot of work.
We had decent black powder and making the swivel guns was not hard, once the production line for it was set up, but we hit a snag when it came to the primers. I wanted a breach-loading, bolt-action, clip-feeding gun with brass cartridges and lead bullets, but after two years of trying to come up with a depe
ndable primer, I had to set the project on a back burner. There just wasn't time, not if we were going to get it into mass production in time to train the men to use them to fight the Mongols.
Yet I dreaded going to something like a flintlock. The rate of fire would be so slow that we would need twelve times the guns to do the same job. The advantages of breach-loading and premade cartridges were obvious. The problem was lighting the gunpowder.
I finally hit on the idea of putting a firecracker wick on the back of each cartridge and an alcohol burner in the base of each gun. A shield on the bolt covered the wick until the bolt was turned home, at which time the flame hit the wick, it sputtered for a few moments and then fired the cartridge. Not the best system in the world, but it worked.
During the Hussite wars in fifteenth-century Bohemia, war carts proved to be decisive in many battles. Our guns were fairly heavy, about six dozen pounds each, and the weight of the ammunition alone was more than a man could be expected to carry, not to mention the other arms and armor.
I came up with a big, four-wheeled cart, six yards long and two wide. The wheels were two yards high and mounted on castors such that the cart could be pulled either the long way, for transport, or sideways, for fighting. There was no possibility of getting enough horses to pull the thousand carts that we would need, so thirty-six men armed with pikes and halberds would have to do the job. Six guns and gunners in the cart could be pulled along with the pikers protecting the guns and the guns firing over the heads of the pikers.
One side of each cart had enough armor to stop an arrow, and the top of the cart could be slung six yards out to act as a yard and a half high shield for the men pulling it. It was armored, too.
If the men were well trained, and if we could get the Mongols to attack us, or if we could somehow surround them, they were dog meat. But there wasn't much we could do about their mobility. The typical Mongol had several horses and, in a race, they could easily beat us.
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